notable mental methane vents

• SOC (n.): system on a chip. Previously known as a microcontroller. What we now call just 'a computer', but integrated boards were an enormous deal, a revolution within the digital revolution.


• UUOC (n.): Useless Use Of Cat (Award). Surprisingly mean retort to StackOverflow answers which use the UNIX tool cat where a pipe would do.


• abience (n.): the urge to withdraw. Usually used to mean pathological avoidance, but to me it is also the plain, sacred joy of missing out.


• hardtack (n): A very basic cracker, just baked flour and water. Staple of navies and Tudor explorers.


• HARKing (v.): Hypothesizing After the Results are Known. A particular problem in social science, where pre-registration of studies is a tiny minority of work.


• merchantable (UK legal n.): Good enough to be sold.


• technical steer (n.): Input from expert staff, AKA 'knowledge'.


• whitespace damage (n.): subtle but breaking changes to source code performed by ordinary text processors, e.g. line wrapping, hidden characters, odd apostrophes. This phrase is a shibboleth for being A Very Serious Person, e.g. a kernel dev.


• moving up the value chain (phrase): performing work further away from physical extraction, processing, and manufacturing. Supposedly insulates you from competition because your outputs are less easily evaluated as they become less physical. Economic abstraction.


• FANG: Facebook / Amazon / Netflix / Google, particuarly when their stocks are used as a bellwether.


• DGP: data generating process. This took bloody ages to google.


• rebranding (v.): "a euphemism for 'euphemism'" - Jonathan Meades